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Love One Another
1 John 4:7 - 12
Do you remember
that last week I told you that we would be talking about a hard topic,
“Forgive One Another”? Well I must have been right because I had six
different conversations last week with people wondering why I would
stand in the pulpit and preach about them. Well I was stunned at the
first conversation but by the time I got to the 5th conversation, I had
my response all worked out. I meant what I said on my first Sunday here.
I don’t preach about individuals, I will come to you if I think that we
need to talk. I will preach about struggles with the Christian life, and
I think that we can all relate to those.
Now with that being said I feel that today will be a little easier to
hear. Our sermon today comes from several passages, let’s read them
together.
John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another:
just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
John 15:12-13 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I
have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays
down his life for his friends.
Romans 12:9 - 10 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to
what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one
another in showing honor.
Did you recognize the common thread in these passages? Love one another
and I have loved you, Love one another with brotherly affection. Let’s
look at one more passage today.
1 John 4:7 - 12 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,
and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does
not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God
was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world,
so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have
loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one
another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in
us and his love is perfected in us.
John tells us in 1 John 4:7-12 three reasons that we need to Love One
another and then I want to look at 3 ways that manifests itself in our
lives.
First we love because that is our natural response to a God that loved
us first.
Love is not just a characteristic of God; He is Love. And I believe that
we will follow in line with His character when we come to a real
realization of what He has done for us.
God’s love is on a totally different level that what the world considers
or passes off as love. God’s love is not about meeting my needs first as
it is loving everyone around us more than we love ourselves. It’s a
sacrificial love. God’s love enters a room with a There you are,
mentality instead of a here I am mentality.
Second we love one another as evidence of our relationship with God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
We have talked before that we can fool a lot of people, and we can even
fool ourselves at times, but I believe that in the end our life always
tells the truth about our relationship with God. You can tell a lot
about my relationship with God by the way that I love the people that He
loves.
Finally we must love one another so that we can reflect Christ.
One of the things that we enjoy about living on Scuffelgrit hill is the
chance we have to see the moon. You know living in Montgomery,
Nashville, and Atlanta I had forgotten how beautiful the sky was without
all of the neon lighting up the sky. Every night I walk from the
building to the house and I have to stop and just look for a while at
the stars and the big beautiful moon up there. Some night it shines so
bright I feel like it brightens up the whole house.
But we all learned in 5th grade Science class that the moon only shines
because it reflects the light of the Sun. In the same way John says that
we must also shine, if we reflect the Son, Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another.
So today let’s look at how that love is to be reflected in your life.
First it must be reflected in our Kindness
I wanted to start here because I believe that kindness is powerful, and
just like love kindness is something that the world doesn’t understand.
The German philosopher, Nietzsche, who so influenced Hitler, looked at
the Christian world & said that Christianity strips strong men of their
power because Christianity encourages people to be kind. They spend
their energy trying to take care of the feeble & the oppressed.
Nietzsche said, "If we could rid the world of Christianity then we could
develop supermen."
Well Nietzsche was wrong kindness doesn’t take our power away, it
strengthens us, but at the same time it makes us vulnerable.
You know how it feels to reach out and be that vulnerable. Sometimes
people see our kindness as suspect.
Like when a woman’s car breaks down on the road & she worries whether to
accept the offer of help from two strange men. Or when a man is kind to
a woman who is not his wife, or a woman is kind to a man who is not her
husband. And the world looks at that & sometimes misinterprets it.
Now I am not saying the there are those in the world wouldn’t use
kindness to get an advantage, but that doesn’t relieve us from our duty
to share Christian kindness.
And sometimes we are afraid to express kindness because we are scared of
being misused.
I heard a television reporter say this week that the "The romance of
Katrina is coming to an end." Now, you may think "romance" is a weird
term, but I think it's dead on. In the wake of tragedy there are
concerts, benefits, news stories, headlines, etc. Now all of that’s over
and we are seeing what we're left with after the immediate drama of
Katrina. We're left with many homeless and jobless people who are still
searching for family members and a way to put their lives back together.
So what do you do? I know that the conversations in my house have
discussed about how in the past we would help someone, & then that
person became dependent upon us. They came back again & again with open
hands for us to repeat the act of kindness.
So what happens? Some decide that it is too risky to be kind. So they
turn kindness over to the welfare agencies, or to the Salvation Army.
They say, "They’re professionals, they know what to do. They know how to
handle the parasites. So we’ll leave it all up to them."
What happens? Bureaucracy replaces kindness & love is left out. With out
love there is no kindness just the southing of our own souls.
Solomon writes in Proverbs 21:21 Whoever pursues righteousness and
kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor. Let us show our love
by pursuing Kindness.
Secondly we must love one another through our politeness.
Have you ever heard a sermon on being polite? I know that I haven’t but
I think that it is a critical part of showing my love for you.
We have become a people that care only for themselves, and only do what
makes me happy, and politeness has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Two weeks ago I took Trista’s little sister out on her first date. We
thought that it was important to show her how the boys she were going to
date needed to treat her and how she deserved to be treated. I opened
the car doors for her, the door to the restaurant, made sure that she
had anything that she needed, and even went and watched the movie that
she wanted to watch.
When we returned to the house I asked her if she understood how she was
to be treated. She looked at me and said, “If I have to wait for someone
to treat me like that I’ll never get a date.”
Maybe she’s right. But in 1 Corinthians 13:5 we see Paul say that love
is not rude.
J.B. Phillips paraphrases this verse by saying, "Love practices good
manners."
The reason that we are polite or practice good manners is that we show
people how much they matter. People are important to God so the must be
important to me. That what I was trying to impress on Tina and that’s
what our love for one another needs to impress on the world, and this
community.
We say please, and thank you, hold open doors, smile, and remember one
another because we are trying to tell each other through our actions
that you matter, that people matter.
Thirdly we must love one another by trying to meet the needs of people.
Love meets the needs of others before it meets the wants of self. We
can’t tell our community that Jesus loves them until were ready to love
them, too. I can preach a dozen sermons on the subject of love. But one
act of love on your part will communicate better than all the sermons
that I might preach.
As a Christian community we need to learn to meet the needs of others.
Our culture says, "You meet your wants first, then maybe you might try
to meet the needs of others. But it is only through meeting their needs
that we can lead people to Christ. Love is infectious. And in a world
that is starved for love, if we can learn to love one another our
community, will draw people to Christ.
The story is told of a preacher riding on a bus, & a drunk comes
stumbling on, sitting down beside him. The preacher immediately took out
his Bible & began reading scripture to the man. Then he announced to the
drunk, "Do you know that you’re going to hell?" The drunk said, "Oh, no!
I got on the wrong bus again!"
I believe that it is important that we teach following the world’s ways
will lead you down the broad path to hell, but the best way to lead the
world away from hell is to show them how to get to heaven. We need to
communicate a message of love, for love leads people to Christ.
When Christ looks at us it is His love that sees us for what we can
become, rather than what we are.
In 1 Corinthians 6, the apostle Paul paints a picture of what the church
really is. He talks about how the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of
heaven. Then he gives a long list of those who will not get into heaven.
They are the sexually immoral, the idolaters, adulterers, male
prostitutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkards,
slanderers, swindlers. None of those, he says, will inherit the kingdom
of God.
Then he says, "This is what some of you were." We are sinners, too.
But then Paul says, "You were washed, you were sanctified, you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ & by the Spirit of our
God." That’s the church! That’s why we have to love one another.
I want this church, more than anything else, to be a community of love.
More than anything else, I want to be able to come here, & I want you to
be able to come here, & feel totally & completely loved.
If we love each other as God has loved us, then we will become the
society of love that will serve like a magnet, drawing a world that is
starving for love into the presence of Jesus & the salvation that He
offers.
This world is in need of a Savior and we can meet that need by showing
the Love of our Savior. And that can be done by
L—listening when another is speaking,
O—overlooking petty faults and forgiving all failures;
V—valuing other people for who they are;
E—expressing love in a practical way.
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